Kevin Modesti's Words & Numbers

I guess I missed it. All of us covering the Lakers-Spurs game on Sunday missed it.

Here's the entire line from my play-by-play notes about the incident that led to Kobe Bryant's suspension by the NBA for one game without pay, Tuesday night's game at New York, costing the guard six figures in salary:

(2.7) / x24 bx20
OT

Translation: After a timeout with 2.7 seconds left in regulation, from an in-bounds pass, Bryant (number 24) missed a shot, blocked by Manu Ginobili (number 20). And the game went to overtime.

On the next line of the notebook, I wrote:

(20 hurt?)

Ginobili had sunk to the floor, clutching his face, and begun OT on the bench, attended by the trainer.

But there was no hint of controversy or anger from either side. I remember that as the teams lined up for the OT center tip, Bryant's lips could be read asking Bruce Bowen, "Is Manu all right?" And repeating it when the question couldn't be heard over the crowd noise.

By all appearances, Bowen did not answer, "Manu's lucky to be alive, no thanks to you, and he says he'll see you in court!"

What a stupid suspension, also costing fans at Madison Square Garden a chance to watch Bryant and (we'll find out shortly) maybe costing the Lakers a victory. Bryant swung his arms, apparenty trying to draw a foul, and his right elbow caught Ginobili in the face. But no foul was called on Bryant or Ginobili, the Spurs guard was back on the court in minutes, and nobody thought twice about the brief episode.

It's instructive to look back at what was written about these incidents at the moment. I checked the Daily News, the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register. None of us even mentioned it in Monday's papers.

It was an accidental collision in a contact sport.

So having licked all of its other problems, from violence on the court to players' sloppy dress off it, the NBA front office has sent out another message by suspending Bryant:

Accidents will not be tolerated!

OK, whatever you say.

Posted by Kevin Modesti at 05:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Please explain why Hillary Clinton, in announcing, "I'm in," found it useful to add, "And I'm in to win."

Writing sports, I'm always around people who are in to win. I notice that unless they're underdogs desperate to be taken seriously, they never need to point it out. So why does a politician with far more than an Orange Bowl at stake, one favored in the polls to win her party's nomination, punctuate her presidential candidacy kickoff by stating the obvious?

Maybe she's trying to demonstrate to sexists that a woman possesses the focused will to be the leader of the free world. Or she means to set herself apart from Bill Clinton (in to sin?). Or from George W. Bush (in to have the win gifted to him by the Supreme Court?).

She is refreshingly blunt compared to mealy-mouthed candidates who vow merely to be the voice of the voiceless, further a just and productive society, restore America's respect around the world, etc.

In to win? Maybe she likes the rhyme and the easy fit for one-column headlines, which we in newspapers believe should be the first concern of all public figures.

Posted by Kevin Modesti at 01:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you’ve read about the efforts of California officials to restrict the use of anabolic steroids in racehorses, you might like to hear the ways to tell that a horse is on steroids.

We can think of 10.

1. After winning the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, he flouts horse-racing convention and skips the Belmont to compete in the Tour de France.

2. He suddenly starts posting record-breaking numbers at the advanced age of 5.

3. Entry sheets list his color as “dark bay or brown, acne-pink on back.�

4. Fillies around the barn whisper that he’s “shrunk like a horse.�

5. He not only takes the Fifth but wins the sixth, seventh and eighth on the same day.

6. He takes advantage of superstar status by demanding four stalls and replacing straw with a Barcalounger.

7. His head is as big as a horse’s.

8. His lawyer claims that even if he did use steroids, that wouldn’t account for his superior eye-hoof coordination.

9. After running up the track with 20-claiming 3-year-old sprinters on the main, he turns into a monster with 40-optional older horses going long on the grass, winning off under a pull despite a six-wide trip! You know, that old overnight-success cliché.

10. He won’t talk about the past.

Posted by Kevin Modesti at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

News of Art Buchwald's death at 81 sent me to the bookcase to find a slim yellowed paperback called "I Am Not a Crook," a collection of the great political satirist's columns from the Watergate years. Buchwald's imagination allowed him to write about heavy topics in terms everyone could enjoy. Since this is supposed to be a sports blog, let's enjoy the time Buchwald goofed on President Nixon's choice of a replacement for disgraced Vice President Agnew by turning the whole episode into a football game.

This is a Buchwald column from 1973.

Send in a New Kicker

Playing Coach Dick Nixon paced up and down the sidelines of the football field. His team was on his own 10-yard line, and he was being forced to punt. To make matters worse, his only kicker, Ted Agnew, had been thrown out of the game for unsportsmanlike conduct and had been put on probation for three years and fined $10,000.

Sitting on the bench, all suited up, were Johnny Connally, Rocky Rockefeller, Ronnie Reagan, Bill Rogers, Mel Laird, Barry Goldwater and Big Elliott Richardson.

“Send me in, Coach,� begged Connally. “I can save the game.�

“I can’t kick,� Rocky said, “but if you need me, I’ll run with the ball.�

Ronnie Reagan said, “Don’t forget, I was the original Gipper of Notre Dame.�

Nixon just walked up and down the sidelines some more.

He was in a terrible dilemma. If he sent in a strong player, the Democratic team vowed to block the kick. If he sent in a weak player, he might lose the game.

He looked over at Johnny Connally. Johnny was his first choice, but he was a problem for any coach. He had played on the Democratic team until this year, and now that he was on the Republican team, the Democrats seemed to have it in for him. Nixon’s scouts had informed him that if he sent in Connally, the Demos would smear him.

The crowd, shocked by Agnew’s sudden departure from the field, kept screaming for a substitute.

But this punt meant a lot, and Coach Nixon was not about to be rushed. He walked to the Republican cheering section and said over the loudspeaker, “I need your help. Would everybody please list your three choices for a substitute kicker, put them in a sealed envelope and send them down to the field?�

The Democrats were furious. “How long are you going to have a timeout?� one of the players yelled.

Nixon ignored him and walked down past his bench.

Everyone looked up hopefully. Ronnie Reagan said, “Coach, I know your game plan, and I’m a team player. Give me a break.�

Rocky said, “You have to send in someone whom the fans can rally around. You can’t think of today, but of the big game in 1976. You won’t be sorry, Dick.�

Barry Goldwater played it cool. “I don’t give a damn if you send me in or not, Coach, but you could do a lot worse.�

The fans were passing down their sealed envelopes, and Mel Laird started counting names. Every time he came across a list in which he wasn’t mentioned, he threw it away.

Coach Nixon went up to Big Elliot Richardson. “Elliott, if I send you in, will you forget about the tapes I made of the other games?�

“It’s hard to say, Coach. It’s not up to me anymore; it’s up to the football commissioner.�

Nixon turned away in disgust.

Mel Laird came over with the count. “The fans have voted 49,768 for me, four for Connally, three for Rocky and one for Agnew.�

A delegation from the Democratic bench started to cross the field. “Look, Dick,� one of them said as he came up to Nixon, “you can’t hold up the game forever. We can block any kicker you send on the field.�

Nixon barked, “The rules say I have a right to choose any substitute I want to kick for me.�

“But only with our approval,� another Democratic coach said. “Now we have a compromise. Why don’t you use one of our kickers? It could bring the stadium together.�

“You’re out of your minds,� Nixon said. “You want me to use a Democratic player on my team?�

The Democratic coach shrugged his shoulders. “It’s the only way you’ll ever get to punt.�

Nixon angrily turned to the bench and said, “Go in, Jerry, and win this one for the Spiro.�

Posted by Kevin Modesti at 05:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the 21st Century sign that baseball season is just around the corner, the first fantasy-league magazines of the year have hit the newstands, full of ratings and predictions for about 700 major-leaguers.

My baseball fantasy is that actual ballclubs still matter more than any of my friends' fantasy teams. Thus I used one of the magazines to figure out how, say, the Dodgers could expect to do in 2007 if they were an entry in a Rotisserie league.

Pretty well, apparently. Just looking at the National League West teams, and adding up their hitters' and pitchers' "projected values" from The Sporting News' fantasy preview magazine, we find the following total "values":

1. Dodgers -- $114 (led by shortstop Rafael Furcal, $21)
2. Padres -- $99 (closer Trevor Hoffman, $21)
3. Rockies -- $79 (third baseman Garrett Atkins, $23, left fielder Matt Holliday, $22)
4. Giants -- $69 (second baseman Ray Durham, $11, left-hander Barry Zito, $10)
5. Diamondbacks -- $65 (right-hander Brandon Webb, $23)

Start printing those fantasy playoff tickets.

Posted by Kevin Modesti at 05:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you heard the callers on sports-talk radio Thursday, you might have the impression that 99 percent of Los Angeles not only doesn't care about David Beckham joining the Galaxy but is downright hostile to the English star.

That's wrong. Don't listen to those people.

It's talk radio. For callers and hosts, the default position is the same. On a subject like soccer, where they have no confidence in their knowledge and opinions, their only defense is to say it's not important enough to care about. They are absolutely not allowed at any point to say, "To be honest, it sounds interesting, but I don't know enough about soccer to comment on the significance of this signing."

Look, if you don't know anything about soccer, don't enjoy the sport one bit, and don't care about Beckham, that's fine with me. A lot of people do, and we hope it's all right with you.

For the hour I listened to the radio, flipping between two stations, caller after caller came on to say, "David Beckham? Who cares?"

Yeah, it's pretty dull stuff, the international superstar coming to our town for $250 million and all.

Let's see, Talkradioman: You tuned in to a radio discussion of Beckham. You dialed the phone number. You waited 45 minutes on hold. You finally got your 15 seconds of fame. And you used it to say, "David Beckham? Who cares?"

Who cares? Sounds like you do.

Posted by Kevin Modesti at 07:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Good stuff in Adam Gopnik's article on watching pro football ("The Unbeautiful Game") in the Jan. 8 edition of The New Yorker, touching on the efforts of the sport's statisticians to deliver unconventional insights like those of baseball's sabermetricians.

The point, Gopnik writes, is "to challenge the conventional wisdom about how teams win and lose, and the football analysts are doing that now. Their conviction (much simplified) is that in the NFL you pass to win and run to sustain a victory ... and that most of the more conservative, hardnosed football strategies, like the one-run, bunt-and-sacrifice strategies in baseball, look canny and play dumb. There is even a strong, heretical movement under way against automatically punting on fourth down."

Here's the punchline.

Gopnik writes: "The irony of sophisticated analysis is that, while it tends to run counter to what the shouting heads on television pontificate about, it tends, ultimately, to go along with what the ignorant fans in the stands are screaming for: swing for the fences, go for it on fourth, etc."

Maybe, between academic breakthroughs like this and the celebration of Boise State's gambling style, we're about to see a shift to a more entertaining approach to X's and O's.

We'll know the change is complete if Karl Dorrell and Marty Schottenheimer jump on the trend.

Posted by Kevin Modesti at 05:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)